The present embodiments relate to a diaphragm for an x-ray apparatus.
A patient may be continuously x-rayed during a medical treatment and/or medical intervention, such as an endoscopic intervention. The patient is exposed to ionizing and potentially harmful radiation. High exposure doses may lead to radiation injury after longer treatments or interventions, for example, in the head region and in the brain. The radiation injury may result in reddening of the skin or cause tissue damage. A treating physician and the medical support personnel are also exposed to continuous scattered radiation during the treatment, since they are close to the patient during the endoscopic intervention. Accordingly, a reduction to the exposure dose for each party is desired
The strategies used to prevent unnecessarily high exposure allow for a partial acceptance of the radiation injury in consideration of the medical benefits. A reduction in the radiation dose is however to be achieved as far as possible. The radiation dose cannot be reduced arbitrarily, since the image quality which is essential to the examinations suffers as a result. A further possibility of reducing the overall exposure dose consists in restricting the effective field of view by more or less statically inserted diaphragms. These diaphragms can be controlled using suitable mechanisms.
A dynamic shadowing effect of certain regions of the radiation path prevents surrounding tissue from being damaged during the radiation and/or x-ray process.
DE 10 2005 018 811 A1 discloses a diaphragm apparatus for an x-ray apparatus provided to scan an object. The diaphragm apparatus includes at least two diaphragms, with a bundle of rays set with the first diaphragm being at least partially dynamically masked by the second diaphragm for at least one segment of the scanning. The radiation dose for an object is reduced, such that a precise setting of the bundle of rays for illuminating the measurement field of a detector and also a dynamic masking of an unnecessary part of the x-rays can be carried out using the diaphragm apparatus. This dynamic masking of a part of the x-rays is implementable at high speed.